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Artist of the Month: Joan Mitchell

The “Artist of the Month” series is a new feature on MolaPola designed to expand my own knowledge of the art world and to share my findings with others. Posts can be found both on the MolaPola home-page and under the Artists I Love tab. First up, Joan Mitchell.

Artist of the Month (February)

Joan Mitchell

Bracket (1989) from the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Copyright Estate of Joan Mitchell 2016.

Perhaps best known for her abstract paintings of trees, American artist Joan Mitchell has a masterful way with color and the brush that has elevated her to a status of prolificacy. When I first saw her work in this exhibition at Cheim & Reid, I was left thoroughly impressed. See this bio of Mitchell (by Artsy) below:

In 1950s New York, Joan Mitchell was a lively, argumentative member of the famed Cedar Bar crowd, alongside Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and other notable first- and second-generation Abstract-Expressionist painters. Based on landscape imagery and flowers, her large-scale paintings investigate the potential of big, aggressive brushstrokes and vivid color to convey emotion. “I try to eliminate clichés, extraneous material,” she once said. “I try to make it exact. My painting is not an allegory or a story. It is more like a poem.” Mitchell, who moved to France in 1959, has had numerous museum exhibitions, and examples of her work hang in nearly all the important public collections of modern art.

To find out more about the artist, check out the very informative Joan Mitchell Foundation website here.

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MolaPola was founded in the spring of 2014 by Moselle Kleiner as a way of chronicling her ongoing exploration of museums, galleries, and art shows around the globe. As of 2017, the site concentrates on bringing fresh perspectives to art world issues. Thank you for visiting MolaPola! Please note that images and writing belongs to Moselle Kleiner unless otherwise specified.